Do The ‘Gilmore Girls’ Have A Drinking Problem?

When you think of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, three things are bound to come to mind: their big sapphire eyes, their verbal celerity, and their obsession with coffee. The seven season run of Gilmore Girls could be subtitled “An Ode To Coffee.” Their love of that hot, dark, caffeine-laced glug became more than a cliché – it was a hallmark of the show. In fact, you could almost say the two pillars of Gilmore Girls were the themes of mother-daughter love and coffee.

Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life wastes no time in reuniting Lorelai, Rory, and coffee. The opening moments of Episode 1, “Winter,” see both mother and daughter holding (comically empty) coffee cups in the Stars Hollow square. Lorelai gives a speech at one point about the importance of coffee in her life. The one real “strike” against Rory’s bafflingly sweet boyfriend Paul? He doesn’t like coffee! So it’s not like Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life strayed too far from the original series in this regard. That said, the Lorelai and Rory (and Emily) Gilmore we find in the revival series have all fallen under the spell of another bewitching beverage: alcohol.

Guys, we need to talk about how much the proverbial Gilmore Girls drink in the revival series.

At first, the inclusion of alcohol seemed normal. Rory is 32-years-old and Lorelai is 48, so OF COURSE wine should be on the dinner table. And yes, whiskey should be swilled at a funeral. Of course, it’s lovely that Stars Hollow suddenly has a “secret bar.” After a while, though, booze started popping up everywhere. Emily started swilling gimlets and sherry in the afternoon. Lorelai’s new friends on the Pacific Coast Trail were tearing through multiple boxes of wine. Then, there was the scene where Rory downed two shots of whiskey in her office in the middle of the afternoon…in under one minute.

Rory calls this “lunch” and says barley is a “grain” when her old flame Jess makes a quip. Immediately after this first glass, she berates a subordinate by invoking the name of the dearly departed Nora Ephron. Oh, and Jess calls her out on the fact that she has to remind herself to break up with her long-suffering boyfriend by scrawling a quick note on a post-it. It’s all too much for the frazzled Ms. Gilmore. To cope with the stress, she pours them both another round (even though Jess hasn’t finished his first).

There are 42 seconds between these two shots. I counted them. Why? Because, unlike Rory Gilmore, I do not spend most work days swilling whiskey at my desk. I spend them working.

I don’t want to be too mean to Rory. She’s not alone here. As I said, Lorelai, Emily, and Rory Gilmore have all suddenly developed a taste for the sauce. To be fair, I know a lot of grown women who like to drink. Heck, I typically end my day with a few glasses of wine. The problem, though, is three-fold. First, each of these characters is going through something of an emotional tumult in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Emily is coping with devastating grief, while Lorelai and Rory are both sabotaging their own happiness at almost every turn. Day drinking is probably not advisable for any of them. I’m told that emotionally fragile people and heavy boozing are a recipe for a real problem.

Speaking of which, the second big problem here is that there is a total balls-out alcoholic in Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life. Naomi Shropshire, played by Alex Kingston, is a brilliant woman whom Rory cozies up to after profiling her for the New Yorker. Shropshire is an icon, a mentor, a collaborator, and a drunk. Her alcoholism is used for laughs. By the time Rory’s done with her, she’s no longer being portrayed as a powerful woman, but a messy, moronic fool. It’s not a great take on a complicated and widespread illness.

The third issue? It is incredibly jarring to see this much alcohol imbibed in Stars Hollow. As Taylor points out in a town meeting, there is a ban on serving alcohol in the picturesque hamlet (hence the “secret bar”). We’ve never really seen Rory or Lorelai take a shine to any drink more than coffee. Poor coffee! Remember coffee? That is what Gilmore Girls are supposed to drink! Not malt whiskey! A colleague of mine pointed out that network executives might have put the kibosh on heavy drinking in the original series. Netflix doesn’t care about keeping Emily Gilmore’s liver pure so Emily Gilmore is free to have all the backyard gimlets she wants! Ironically, I think if you tallied up all the drinks and really thought about the context of each one, it wouldn’t seem that bad. But I also think that it looks so much worse because we’re not accustomed to any major boozing in Stars Hollow.

Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life puts our heroines in situations they want to run away from. Rory runs back to Stars Hollow, Lorelai runs to the Pacific Coast, and Emily runs to a pair of jeans. They also run to alcohol. It’s pushed into a variety of scenes with such force that you can’t help but take notice. Maybe it’s supposed to be a signal that time has passed and the Gilmores are all getting older, but I can’t help but see it as a sign that none of them are great at confronting their demons head on. In the end, though, I suppose it’s just a silly show that we all turn to, too, for much of the same reasons.

(But can someone please tell Rory Gilmore that real writers go for the booze after their deadlines are made?)